Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday December 09, 2012 @02:14AM
from the rise-of-the-iMachines dept.

dcblogs writes "Apple's planned investment of $100 million next year in a U.S. manufacturing facility is relatively small, but still important. A 2009 Apple video of its unibody manufacturing process has glimpses of highly automated robotic systems shaping the metal. In it, Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design, described it. 'Machining enables a level of precision that is just completely unheard of in this industry,' he said. Apple has had three years to improve its manufacturing technology, and will likely rely heavily on automation to hold down labor costs, say analysts and manufacturers. Larry Sweet, the CTO of Symbotic, which makes autonomous mobile robots for use in warehouse distribution, described a possible scenario for Apple's U.S. factory. First, a robot loads the aluminum block into the robo-machine that has a range of tools for cutting and drilling shapes to produce the complex chassis as a single precision part. A robot then unloads the chassis and sends it down a production line where a series of small, high-precision, high-speed robots insert parts, secured either with snap fit, adhesive bonds, solder, and a few fasteners, such as screws. At the end, layers, such as the display and glass, are added on top and sealed in another automated operation. Finally, the product is packaged and packed into cases for shipping, again with robots. "One of the potentially significant things about the Apple announcement is it could send a message to American companies — you can do this — you can make this work here," said Robert Atkinson, president of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."

If the reason it can be done in the US is automation there's very little difference in terms of employment -- The capital holders get to keep more of their capital, some Asians get fired, and very few Americans get hired.Sure the GDP will rise but that won't make the slightest difference for the unemployed.

Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

GGP fears these automated plants displacing mostly imaginary workers. Few people in the US are doing manufacturing assembly work, much less the trivial work required of these robots. If anything they will expand the demand for engineers, maintenance workers, and more importantly the secondary fields of trade and distribution. It will also lower the price of assembly line robots (assuming they're US-made). Add to that the additional tax revenue from an expanding economy. Addressing wage inequality is a large

The workers that are being replaced aren't imaginary, they work for FoxConn in China...or something analogous. Most of your other points seem valid, if parochial. But it's not at all clear how this contributes to what you correctly identify as a "largely political matter". There isn't an obvious natural limit to "how rich" and individual can be, as there is to "how poor" he can be. And the extremely rich in the US are already so extremely much richer than ther poor, that there's no clear reason for not

The workers aren't imaginary, they're in China. Well, maybe that makes them imaginary to some people in the U.S.

There's much less labour in designing, building and operating the automated plants than in building regular ones and then running them with people. And even though the people creating the automated plants will be better paid, the end cost of production will still be lower.

But now those people in China are going to need new jobs. And there are probably still jobs in the U.S. that could be outs

Yeah good one... If all the robot factories are owned by few people, how will growing the economy help? We are probably less than 2 decades away from mass riots (And I only say that because I'm not an alarmist).

Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

...or we need to grow the economy. Value creation isnt zero sum.

Perhaps a little of both?

Question is: for how long?

I mean, if the "workers" can't afford to buy the widgets, where's the growth in the economy produced by the" value creation"?Let me rephrase: in extreme, if there aren't any buyers, what meaning the "economy" term still retains?

The potential price would be little over the cost of raw material in a perfect world. Automation has always been pushed forward as a way to lower manufacturing costs AND product cost.

Except that we are talking about Apple which is known to charge much more than needed and it's unlikely that the price will lower... In fact, the price may even increase as "it's made in US" with fallacies as "greater quality", "higher production costs",...

The cost of raw materials would be close zero since that is also basically labor.

The thing is that if we look back say 300 years we see that we already have close to free energy and close to free labor by 1712's standards. The average person today uses more energy than the richest king back then and the average farmer today produces as much food as a village of hundreds of people produced back then. We can produce so much food that we have to throw away or burn a significant fraction of it to prevent our food storage from overflowing...

And yet we still have problems like homelessness and people dying from curable diseases.

Except that if Apple really did charge more than needed, than someone else would step in and sell a similar product for cheaper. But we just don't see that happening. Other companies make similar products, but almost none of them contain the same amount of "polish" as the Apple products. Just the physical design, getting so much into a small case, and making just about every component custom in order to do so has to account for a sustantial cost. Although they use commodity CPUs in their machines, that'

I can't think of a single one of the many PCs I owned in the past that lasted 5 years without having had to have multiple things replaced and/or repaired.

I definitely like Apple's products. We have some Macs, some older iPhones and a few iPods. We also have a Windows machine and I have an Android phone.

With that as my setup, I have to say that if you buy quality PC components they will last. Yes, my old 2004 G5 is still humming along as the kids' computer. My 2005 iBook G4 is still in use as my father-in-law's computer (with one repair due to baby drool). I haven't even had an itch to replace my 2009 MacBook Pro. But the HP workstation (similar in price to t

I have a Samsung Galaxy S smart phone. Its not bad unless you have played with an iPhone of course. The Samsung works but the UI is poorly thought out IMHO. [...] I am not a fanboy, but I am not blind either.

No, but you may be biased.

I have an iPhone and an iPad. Way back when, I was looking at an app on an Android tablet and--Oh My God--the UI was horrible. I couldn't figure out how to do anything with it! It was a complete mess! I mentioned it to one of resident Android fans when I was talking about how sucky Android apps are and how you can't figure out how to do anything with them.

He sighed, picked up the Android tablet, brought up the app and hit the menu button. *Poof* Everything I wanted to do was

Having the robot factories here is good. We can tax the owners, tax the engineers, and use the proceeds to support all the unemployed people. Automation guarantees that we will, eventually, have 50+% permanent unemployment. We'll need to transition to a socialist economy to survive, and it will help if the factories are in our backyard.

This kind of sentiment is informed by 1920s misinformation. We've already solved the problem of not having any manufacturing jobs by transitioning to a service economy.

If you still think manufacturing robots are going to cause 50% unemployment, consider the numbers: currently, 9% of the workforce is employed in manufacturing. Even if every single one of them got replaced by a robot and couldn't find a job anywhere else (unlikely), it would still only bring the unemployment rate up to ~17%. That 50% permanent unemployment rate isn't going to be a catalyst that will bring about a socialist economy, sorry. We'll all have jobs as shoe-shiners instead (actually in financial services, hospitality, retail, health, human services, information technology and education, but shoe-shiners is more hilarious).

We had to switch to self-service everything because those shitty jobs you describe started getting paid a reasonable amount of money, and many good jobs were unionized and the unions spoke up for their workers to get them decent working conditions, a pension to retire on etc. Because paying for the labour of things cost more (as it should have) the slave-labour jobs disappeared and we did more ourselves to ensure that the cost of the things we paid for were kept down. If you want to be treated like Royalty you still can almost anywhere - it just costs a lot.The problem is that all a long the rich kept getting richer and have gradually been paying less and less taxes. Now they have engineered the destruction of many of the unions, so they can pay shit wages again and continue to get rich on the backs (and bodies) of the workers who make it possible for them.Corporations now rule the world in effect. Oh sure, they allow us the illusion of government and democratic elections but they control the strings behind the puppets we elect, and the government works to their benefit before ours mostly. Its not all cut and dried, not all back and white of course, its many subtle shades of grey too, but the welfare of the average person is not the prime motivation for the elected governments of the age. If it ever was it certainly isnt now.Increased reliance on automation is going to put even more people out of work. If they can automate the industrial side, whats to say they can't automate the service side too? Then where do the ex-members of the middle class go to find work?

Wait for the robot replacing the service economy. A robot in the future could cut your hair or goes in your heart to fix your valve. The service economy is not immune to automatization. And I'm looking forward to it.

Sure, but who would hire you for a few hours a month when their money would be better-spent on robots.

I see two choices - either we all starve to death while robots harvest a bounty unlike anything the world has ever seen, or we give up on the idea that the only way to pay for things is to work for them.

Robots building and designing the robots is inevitable. I think the only question is whether they all work for 10 super-rich guys at the top, or if perhaps those who weren't born into the robot-owning families actually can live off of something more than scraps.

Automation guarantees that we will, eventually, have 50+% permanent unemployment

No it does not guarantee anything of the sort. It *could* happen.. but so could lots of other things.

In your scenario, you would either have a massive welfare program or a large number of destitute people. That would be extremely volatile politically... which would encourage people (in gov and business) to find a suitable solution.

The other problem with your scenario is that you imagine today, but with lots of automated equipment. As if everything else stood still. You have no idea what technology will exis

Automation guarantees that we will, eventually, have 50+% permanent unemployment. We'll need to transition to a socialist economy to survive

Yeah, because a majority of all the people are unemployed now that we only need 4% of the population to work on farms to feed us, right? Back around 1900, when 80% of the people in the USA worked on farms, who could have foreseen the horrific effects of mechanization of agriculture? The horror!

You are very sadly misinformed about the effects of automation on productivity.

You're missing an important statistic, as is everyone else in this discussion (and nearly all the others on Slashdot lately). That statistic is called the participation rate, and according to the Department of Labor, it's the lowest it has been since World War II. The number I saw last was a participation rate of 65%. That is, only 65% of the working age population is actually working. We are, in fact, trending towards 50% unemployment right now, and we're far far closer than the unemployment numbers would have you believe. I haven't seen anybody plot out the trend line, but I suspect it will not be too many years before we're at 50%. In other words, we'll have basically returned to the time when women did not work outside the home.

There are plenty of people willing to argue this would be a good thing, and possibly it could have been. But it's not, and the reasons are too numerous to list, but I can hit the high points. First, wages have remained stagnate for two generations while the cost of living has soared, so it's no longer possible to support a family on a single income. Second, the divorce rate is way over 50%, so the nuclear family is effectively nonexistent. Third, people who have had the idea that they absolutely must work ground into their heads their entire lives who aren't able to find work become self-destructively depressed. Fourth, as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there is no upper limit on automation, so we have no reason to believe the trend will stop at 50%. I could go on, but you get the idea.

The obvious retort is we never had a 100% participation rate, and of course that's true. But it was once much higher than it is now. Those jobs have, in fact, been lost. Permanently and completely. That's why those people are no longer counted as unemployed. They're counted as non-participating. Because they will not ever be employed again.

Your sited fact that we are at tle lowest participation rate since WWII is incorrect, as proof go to this page and then adjust the graphs to show the max timeline:

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

We are on our way down, but still have not hit the 1978 numbers again (62.5%). Of course these numbers don't take in to account the large social change that has happened over time with women in the workforce: the move from mothers expected to be at home to the "norm" of two-income households.

That all being said: we are definately on a long-term course to the unworkability of a capitalist society (much along the lines that Marx predicted, but not on the timeline he expected). But I don't think we are anywhere close to knowing what that course is going to look like.

Health care is not like the other things you list. Want to turn an average person into a criminal, even a murderer? It is easy, just put them or one of their loved ones in the position of a life saving operation being denied because they don't have enough money. Wealth inequality is the best predictor of violent crime. Be Very careful in how you define basic health care and really think about the costs because basic doesn't mean cheap to provide unless you're begging for a violent revolution.

a basic education

If you can't get a job with a basic education, how does this prevent societal disruption?

That is why people have dual income families and a mountain of debt.

Well that and the fact that real income/cost ratios have been going down for decades and wealth inequality has been going up and globalization has made markets less reactive to workers and the progressiveness of taxes is the lowest in many decades.

Hwys and roads.Public schoolsFDAEPANational ParksMedicareFire DepartmentsPolice DepartmentsAnything with the word community in it (Like gardens)Public librariesPublic colleges/universities

Stupid asshole. Some things are better when they are socialist, because we all reap benefits from them. Everyone in this country has reaped benefits from this list in one way or another. That does not mean we need to scrap capitalism. It does mean that we shouldn't dismiss "socialist" ideas out of hand.

We need to either drastically lower the hours for 'full time' work, while increasing wages to compensate, or stop being afraid of welfare and accept that everyone doesn't have to be employed, but still guaranteed housing, healthcare, and living expenses. The only other option is the one we're currently going down, which is that of some kind of sci fi dystopian corporate future with massive slums/even greater prison population (maybe they'll just start merging them). The other options will never fly because people are petty and will complain about someone not having to work as much as them.

Actually it's worse than that. If US jobs that moved to China become US jobs performed by robots you have still lost the jobs and you've also lost the potential market. Those Chinese workers? They used to buy US goods. Not any more.

Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

I don't mean to belittle your concerns, but it's not as bleak as you paint. If the factory is in the US, it is still a net win for employment. Robots need to be manufactured, maintained, and repaired (I work in that industry). This is the kind of high-margin business that US companies can still compete in. The factory needs support services. The factory needs raw materials. The raw materials and finished goods need to be transported. Many of these jobs are much better than the line worker jobs that the robots are replacing.

Sure you have fewer "lose your hand in an industrial accident" kinds of jobs, and that is a problem for people who used to rely on those jobs instead of education. But it's better for the US employment situation than simply hiring a bunch of people in China. And productivity improvements are better for the population as a whole, even if it negatively affects those who end up being replaced by robots. I'm not sure what people with no skills will do when factories become more automated, but holding back productivity is probably not the answer.

So what's this "new economy" going to look like? I think we need look no further than Greece which has a thriving black market labor market. So here's how I see the future of US unskilled labor. Work will be done by robots, by part-time employees or whatever loophole status saves employers the most money, and by people working completely off the books. All which are already happening. I see this getting worse, unless we return to a saner employment policy.

Couldn't have said it better myself. US govt seems to doing all it can to make it more difficult for the middle class

Not all assembly line jobs are/were middle class, but I'd say most of what is left still is. Having high turnover in your assembly line really messes it up and it's been well paying since the early 20th century.

Reading a little bit of modern history would help. I recommend starting with Henry Ford's "five dollar day" though keep in mind that the pay was that high because that's what it took to keep workers not because Ford wanted them to be able to buy Model T cars (that's the surprisingly effective Ford

The middle class is the only class the government can get money from. The rich hire armies of lawyers to find all the loopholes or relocate, the poor have no money and it's bad press to get from the poor anyways.

"Rewarding employers" does nothing in the long term, and only 'distorts the markets' in the short term, so it should have never been used, albeit it seems to be the idiocy du jour.
Think about it: if there's no purchasing power, no matter how much the employer is rewarded, there's no cash flow to keep the business viable. On the other hand, if there is purchasing power and thus business, the employer doesn't need subsidies to survive.
The best thing to do to national economy is to tax/destroy wealth at the top and create it at the bottom.
That, and tax/moderate the financial markets regressively, but in relation to time between purchase and sale -- and start from 99.5% or so regressing to 15% in about ten years, forcing investors to care about the long term health of companies and aiming for stable and predictable markets.
Oh, and cut the copyright to 25 years from first publication. But that's negotiable.

So your solution to the greed of the "job creators" which is leading towards unsustainable wage disparities and high unemployment due to large-scale automation is to make it easier for them to get their fix by lowering employee benefits?

GP was right, we do need a new economy to deal with the fact that people can't compete with robots anymore, we've been putting hackish fixes on this tarted-up barter system for too long and it won't stay running much longer. Trying to make people cheaper than robots doesn't seem like a good short-term solution. Maybe instead we stop giving into the money addiction of the few?

You have a good point. Socially important services should not be dependent upon holding a job. Health care is a socially important service, so a high basic level of health care should be available to everyone, without question. (Note that I did NOT say "all citizens". Public health depends on everyone being healthy. Sick people spread sickness.)

Dense populations have different requirements than diffusely spread populations. Until around 1900, most people lived in the country-side, and we still haven't

I mean sure, on paper wages in the US look high, but then again there's next to no social security. There's no mandatory health insurance, there's little public infrastructure. In some places you even need to have a car.... at least that's what the typical prejudices say.

All of that is true, more or less. Somehow it works for us, except when it doesn't.

I do envy the progress of Europe, but they face a different set of challenges. Imagine if all the nations of Europe were just states in a Federal Republic. Now imagine that Federal Government extracted billions of dollars each year to fund a military to kick around the world having adventures and spreading a specific political ideology. Imagine trying to sustain a European welfare system with that anchor tied around your neck. And after so many generations spent serving the Federal Government and its military people start really believing that's a better use of money than schools or trains or hospitals.

What exactly do you envy? The lower wages? The smaller houses? The lower retirement benefits? The lower levels of education? The lower standard of living? The higher taxes? The religious and ethnic conflicts? Do tell.

Imagine trying to sustain a European welfare system with that anchor tied around your neck.

True: US military spending is a drag on the US. However, we've been getting something in return, namely peace in Europe and Asia. After centuries of vicious wars and disruptions to the global economy originating there, that's been money well spent. Of course, it's debatable whether we need to continue spending it, but until a few years ago, it was absolutely necessary.

...and it's interesting you picked on Germany - not long ago they were East and West, with the east being a bankrupt basketcase with a population trying to adjust to a new way of doing things. Germany has managed to get the east up to speed (OK, not entirely), bankroll the rest of Europe AND go neck and neck with the US on that poverty metric you picked out... all the while maintaining universal health care and other social benefits western social democracies enjoy. Hell, even ancient civilizations manag

...if you don't actually pay anyone except the huge firm that sells you the robots (which were probably made by other robots).
So, while I admit this is an overly simplistic view, we get all of the industrial waste and hardly any jobs. I sure hope more companies do this! There's a park down the street that would sure look great if it were paved over and filled with widget-making robots so a couple hundred people could make 11 bucks an hour to sweep the floor.

More than that as well.
Even for putting components on a PCB a machine is often insufficient. Our current SMT pick and place machines are fast, and they're very precise considering the speed they work at. But if you go to the small component sizes you either sacrifice yield or production time (increase in cost). You'll need to test every single one of the devices if you sacrifice the yield (Apple already did this). In the latter case the cost will increase by a significant factor. In either case you'll need

" A probing station and a computer might be able to tell you where the error is, but desoldering the components is work for a human no matter what you try."

heck, I am putting together a probing station, it parts alone cost just over 10 grand, and required at least a dozen companies products + 2 weeks of my time to wire it all up + 2 weeks worth of software design.

this is the 3rd one this quarter, and we are a tiny company doing simple products!

Problem is that the market is converging. How many years before all 12 of those companies are three companies? How long before they become one? We don't need multiple companies making the same kinds of goods, right? And how much of that equipment could be converged into less devices?

And you don't think that job could be automated away, but of course it could, and it's only a matter of time. Anyone who doesn't believe that probing can and will be automated has ignored the past completely.

It's a myth that automation is bad because it leads to unemployment, but no-doubt that myth will be perpetuated here. Someone might even say "yeah it frees people up, frees them up to STARVE." Let's try to address that before it happens.

As processes become more automated, the things we want become cheaper because the cost of labor is the dominant cost in almost every business. This means people have more spare money available, and it will be spent on things that before would have been considered too wasteful. This creates new industries and new jobs.

At one time, people would have spent virtually all their wealth on food. Because of improvements in automation, most people in the U.S. now spend a small fraction of their wealth on food, and this leaves extra money for, say, entertainment. At one time, having many people devote their whole lives to entertaining others would have seemed hugely wasteful -- those people should be out gathering food, after all -- but the wealth created by automation means that it's now a reality.

Some folks also make the claim that the new wealth will be concentrated in too few hands, and most people won't get wealthier. That, too, is false: automation makes things so cheap that just about everyone ends up owning things like microwaves, air conditioners, and computers -- things that before were reserved for the rich. Here's a good explanation of this: http://youtu.be/OkebmhTQN-4 [youtu.be]

How many cheap iphones can a jobless person purchase?You're being deliberately obtuse. What has happened in the past is no evidence of what will happen in the future. Automation drops prices. Comprehensive automation leaves everyone without a job. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I think our goal should be 0% employment. But that goal leaves us with no one buying things in this style of economy. So we need a new way. These [thefiscaltimes.com] charts show what productivity increases have done over the last four years. A trill

You're assuming that any person can climb the "ladder" of jobs as long as those jobs exist. In reality, people are forced to stop when they reach a rung beyond their ability. Most people can't be trained to be software engineers. Most people can't be trained to be scientists. Most people can't be trained to be artists of any quality. But while the height a person can climb is limited, there is no fundamental limit to automation. Eventually automation puts the starting rung out of reach of the average person and you are left with a mass of people unable to find employment anywhere in the economy, and limited in their intellectual capacity to be trained to ever get one of the scarce jobs that do exist.

For those people there are three options:

1. Grinding attrition to reduce their numbers through geographic isolation (prisons, slums, ghettos), violent crime (police abandon these areas and leave them to be ruled by gangs), and various poverty related causes of death (famine, malnutrition, lack of healthcare).2. Revolt and forcefully take enough to survive from those who have surplus resources3. Get folded into some sort of peaceful wealth redistribution system that provides for their needs and allows them to reach their personal potential, become educated up to their ability, raise a family, and live with dignity.

It's interesting to note that option one is the inevitable result of free-market economics. It's the only end game that can play out once automation really kicks off in a society that completely shuns anything that seems like socialism. It's also, in my opinion, probably the most likely starting point. I think we're going to see all three of those stages in the next 100-200 years. We are already in stage one in many respects.

I've heard this point about lacking ability of the general public to serve 'automation jobs' quite a few times, and you may very well be right.

However I wonder if people 100 years ago imagined the things the general public are now able to these days. For instance not only read and write, but operate complex machinery that instantly communicates their thoughts across the entire world. Yeah most of those thoughts may be youtube comment quality, but that's besides the point.

The problem is that "everyone could own a robot" doesn't necessarily solve problems at an individual level... e.g. the average person needs to eat and your personal robot isn't likely going to be the one growing your food, your food will be produced by an army of agricultural robots producing food somewhere else on an industrial scale. Your personal robot might theoretically be able to put furniture together or do construction in your yard or put together an iPhone but won'

Actually, I think they are. Different people definitely have different skill sets, and these don't seem to be freely interchangable. E.g., I've never mastered elegant longhand, and I've tried for decades (admittedly, recently my attempts have been quite sporadic). I also lack the ability to recognize people after meeting them once, and many people seem to have that ability.

Additionally, while I can, if I exert myself, create quite good artistic renderings of natural objects, and can't *enjoy* doing that.

I have, but you very obviously haven't, seeing as you're regurgitating 30 year old right-wing "welfare queen" bullshit. Only now it's iPads instead of Cadillacs. At least you're trending towards "somewhat plausible."

An iPhone 3G that you couldn't give away for nothing on Craigslist counts as a "smartphone." What do you expect people to do, plunk quarters into increasingly nonexistent payphones to talk to their families or social services or arrange job interviews? Restrict themselves to some old-ass StarTac that isn't any cheaper, does much less, and can't talk to modern cell networks? For the same price you'd pay for a landline (which you can only use while you're at home) you can get a free smartphone with essentially unlimited talk & text, which you can use anywhere and also listen to music or play Angry Birds. I assure you that spending thirty-five bucks a month on mobile communications is far from extravagant living large.

I've heard a lot of people spout this "poor people live like they're rich" line but I've been poor and I've seen poor people. in fact I'm poor now and I can tell you I'm not eligible for anything but the student loans that keep me alive at a sustenance level and VA health care because I was in the military and honorably discharged. My father is poor and all he gets is the social security he paid into. He's physically incapable of working and if he didn't keep a garden he would starve. My mother is poor and she's eligible for nothing. She works as a nursing assistant. One bad job and she'll literally be out on the street.

My friend is poor, she also physically cannot work. on a good day she manages to clean her house. She gets medicine, a CPAP machine, and 700 dollars per month.

I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.

I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.

The meme is more widespread than that because certain media outlets supporting a conservative agenda will perpetuate the idea at every opportunity so that many taxpayers will believe that the single, most significant reason for a country's economic woes is down to people living it large on welfare.

So long as the ruling elite can keep the in-fighting going among the people who massively outnumber them then they don't have to worry about attention being focused on them.

This is so wrong its not even funny. How is automation going to make the Macbook Pro cheaper for the masses? ITS NOT. Apple, like many other companies, decided that manufacturing was too costly in the US, so they moved it overseas where labor costs were next to nothing. If Apple is moving some manufacturing back to the US, and using automation to do it, it must at least be on par with their costs to do business in China. Do you expect Apple to knock $50 off the price of your next computer because of it? The

His point was not that a specific instance of automation will lower the cost of that item. He is talking on the macro scale, responding to a misinformed argument. You can still argue what you are arguing without saying what he is saying is wrong. If moving manufacturing to automation lowers the cost of manufacturing, it might maximize profit to lower the price of their products, but it might maximize profit to keep it the same. We don't have the data. But in general, as efficiencies in an industry (not

He provided a counterexample. The argument by FsG was "automation will reduce costs". The counterpoint by Mr Superman is "no, companies are greedy and will keep prices as is, apple is a counterexample to your argument". A single counterexample is all it takes to say "hey, this argument isn't on the ball."

That's the way it has worked in the past, but there's no guarantee it will always be that way in the future. An observation of a historical pattern is not necessarily a law of nature.

Someday we may reach a point where not enough new jobs are created to offset those lost to automation or offshoring, especially as high-end machines become as smart/reliable as low-end people. In the past, inventions aided humans, not replaced them. A semi-welfare state may be the only way to keep enough demand to push the eco

That's not true. Inventions have been replacing humans for a very very long time. The steam engine and railroads replaced the couriers (ala pony express). The assembly line replaced manufacturing workers (not all of them, just a large portion). Email has been replacing postmen. Computers have been replacing people since their invention (whole accounting offices reduced by 90%), business analysts reduced by 50%, etc.

In almost every case, people have screamed that the end was coming because of it. Peopl

You didn't go back far enough. The horse collar is one of the biggest inventions in human history, enabling the production of surplus food and putting an end to feudalism in Europe and was one of the leading factors in putting an end to the Middle Ages.

FACT: Free time is a GOOD thing. Automation will lead to more free time is changing our lives for the better. Yes change is often uncomfortable, but stagnation is far worse.

What you do not factor in is the fact that people who will loose their job because of automation will not get their job replaced. Say there are 10 people working 40 hour shifts. Because of automation 7 will looses their job.This means that the 30% need to support the other 70%. Or you need to spread the 30% workload among the 100%.

In an ideal world, the latter would be the case. However this does not happen. Instead people start working more then 40 hours, turning the last 30% into 20%.

I only realize it now, but what you are telling is that we have now plenty of food and what is happening is that because of all of the companies doing automatisation we can have more entertainment as well.

As processes become more automated, the things we want become cheaper because the cost of labor is the dominant cost in almost every business. This means people have more spare money available, and it will be spent on things that before would have been considered too wasteful. This creates new industries and new jobs.

Totally wrong. You *assume* that because it becomes cheaper to manufacture something a company is going to lower its selling price. That is basic business school rhetoric that doesn't reflect reality. I used to manufacture a low volume product as a side business. I found that I could automate and reduce expenses 70% (this was in the late 1990's). I didn't reduce my price to consumers. I increased prices 15% within a year because my product was better made (in part no human errors in build), was more reliable (lower returns and warranty costs), and in part I found many people buy on price (higher price means better). Unit sales went down less than 10%. It did help me retire in 2003 at the age of 53. I do not deny that in *some* fields prices may come down, but almost all price reductions are due to competition, to some degree volume, and to some degree obsolescence.

You probably doubt everybody that tells you that "this time it's different", and most of the time you are right, things are not different. Yet, there are times that are different, and this one is one of them.

Robots and AI won't just replace a part of of the economy, they are going to completely replace it. Your rationale simply can't handle that kind of situations, your assumptions are wrong. There won't be other jobs waiting for the fired people, robots will be already on them. (And that includes entretain

Believing that infinite growth is possible in an infinite world is perfectly logical. The problem is that we live in a finite world, and our growth-oriented model of capitalism strongly resembles cancer.

There's no problem building an automated production line. The description in the article would apply to the Sony Walkman production line from 20 years ago. Anything where you can do vertical assembly, just placing the parts in order onto a base, can be automated very effectively with simple robots.

It's amazing that Foxconn uses over 100,000 people just to make iPhones, which are not very complex mechanically.

They use manual labor because humans can be trained faster than automation can be set up. If I hand you a design and contract you do build it, the fastest way for you to get the first products out the door is to use humans. In quickly advancing industries like mobile devices, you can't stay on the leading edge and also use automation.

Robots can't commit suicide from overwork.Not that that has a direct bottom-line impact, as asian workers are valued at less than a single iPad they make... but it has started to have a mildly negative impact on consumer opinion.

Suicide rate of China: 22.23 per 100,000Suicide rate of USA: 12.0 per 100,000Suicide rate of Foxconn factories: 1.5 per 100,000

What can be theorized from this is that a) working at Foxconn is dramatically better than average life in China and b) working at Foxconn is dramatically better than average life in the United States of America.

The impact of holding down labor costs is that income of the market is going down. It means fewer people can afford to buy your product. That means your market is getting smaller. You'll have to reduce the scale of your business. And that means you'll have to cut costs even more. And you know what that leads to.

Yes US is stuck and has been for many years. When was the last good public investment that moved the USA up?
The early 1940's? Post ww2? The 1960's? Beyond that you see massive capital flight to Asia to build factories and sell back to the USA.
The stock market melted with savings, banking and loans into some huge casino with bailouts for any traditional risk.
You have a few unique production lines for tanks, aircraft, subs, arms, space, heavy equipment - but thats all closed and life long with security

They will still need to buy services and products from companies employing human workers - in the purchase and delivery of materials required to build and operate their automated facilities.

The purchase part is already starting to go away. It's called "B2B" and it translates to software making purchases from other software. When Google's self-driving vehicles become common, delivery is gone as well.

As has been said elsewhere in this thread, there is no upper limit to production automation, up to and including all supply chain infrastructure. There was a time when nobody believed that a machine would replace a dock supervisor, but that time is now obviously approaching and will likely be rea

i always had trouble with the machining video. It seems like a waste of time and materials to carve EACH MacBook out of a single slab of material. I would have thought that the case was injection moulded and then 'finished' with a machine.

In the past (and possibly now) the majority of jobs were repetitive low skilled (e.g. digging holes with a shovel, porter, assembly line worker, etc.) that just about anyone could do with a bit of on the job training. To leave school at 15 was not uncommon 20 years ago. The service / knowledge economy jobs require a much more highly skilled workforce. If you look at the previous transition from farm labourer to assembly line worker both jobs were relatively similar in terms of the type of personal attributes required.

My concern for society is that with education standards dropping coupled with an entitlement / victim mentality that many people are being disenfranchised and have little chance of contributing to society. We cannot stop change, but we should plan for it.